


Ten Vorn Anniversary

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 13:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vortex is admitted to a psychiatric hospital after leaving the military. He doesn't expect it to be haunted. </p><p>Set in the Golden Age on Cybertron, Dysfunction AU. </p><p>Contains OCs, horror of a ghostly and generally weird variety, violence, gore, mention of interfacing, mention of suicide (OC).</p><p>Written for the gestalt_love Trick or Treat challenge, to the prompt <i>Any Combaticons or Constructicons: Asylum</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Vorn Anniversary

"This isn't a prison, Vortex." Ward Supervisor Gauge held the door open for him. Everything was bright, fresh, clean, down to the cheerful red highlights on her antennae. "You can join the other patients in the rec room."

"Or I can stay here," Vortex said. He calculated fifteen separate and highly entertaining ways to kill her before she crossed the threshold. 

"You've been here two orns." She sat beside him on the bunk. "We can hardly assess your progress if you keep to your room all the time."

He shrugged; that was kinda the point. He didn't want them assessing him, not with all the weird scrap going down.

For a start, the ceiling had eyes. Organic eyes, dozens of them, in different shades and shapes and sizes. Like the watery-weak gel-filled spheres of so many stupid aliens on so many stupid planets where he'd spent far too much of his life. He avoided looking at them, in case it counted against his release. 

"We don't want to keep you here forever," Gauge said. Her smile was kind, exact, the product of significant practice or very strong programming. "You don't want to stay here forever."

Vortex flicked his rotors. "You want me to go to the rec room?"

"We need to see how you cope in social situations," Gauge said. 

"Really."

It was a joke, a hoop he had to jump through to complete his honourable discharge from the Cybertronian military. A civilian's life was just one short stay in a psychiatric ward away.

If only it wasn't _this_ psychiatric ward. He'd never hallucinated before without a significant physical cause; here, he hallucinated all the time. 

He was pretty sure the eyes weren't real. Gauge certainly couldn't see them, although the saline solution they leaked on him in the night felt wet enough. There was a hand too, ridiculous and loud. It scurried through the vents, trailing cables and a never-ending flow of energon. At first, it had been creepy. Then, when it had failed to present any kind of threat, he'd started to find it kind of entertaining. He couldn't laugh at it though, the staff might be watching.

And then there were the dead mechs. They walked the corridors, slack-mouthed and tongues lolling, mingling with the living and occasionally walking right through them.

The first time he'd seen one, he'd tried to kill it. That had earnt him a temporary motion inhibitor, and a cycle under constant surveillance. Two orns later, and he was used to them, even if he had no idea what they were.

"You've seen a lot," Gauge said. "We understand. Fully thirty two percent of all combat veterans pass through a facility like this before entering civilian life. We're equipped to help, you just need to let us."

"Is that a dig?" Vortex said. He allowed himself a smirk, despite that they'd taken his mask on admission. 

Gauge was unfazed. "It's a hint," she said. "I'll be frank with you, you've given our therapists the run around since you got here. You turn everything back on them, you won't talk about your past, you won't discuss your experiences-"

"It's classified," Vortex said, as though he was fed up with repeating it. "Official Military Secrets. I talk, I die. Screw that." 

Gauge pursed her lips. "Everything you tell us is in confidence," she said. "And besides, you can talk about the things that have happened to you without touching on any sensitive material."

"Uh-huh." Vortex kicked out his legs and fanned his tail rotors. "No."

"You're not making this any easier."

Who for, Vortex thought, me or you? He yawned, giving the ceiling a casual glance. The eyes were staring at him again, but that was nothing new. "So..." he said. 

"So?" Gauge prompted. 

"I go out there and make friendly with the natives, and you'll put your glyph on my datasheet and I can go."

"In time," Gauge said. "Provided you meet certain criteria, yes. We have to make sure that you're ready to lead a civilian life."

Vortex was thoroughly ready. Drinking, partying, getting laid on a schedule that didn't include mandatory training and reports; he couldn't be more ready. But walking out into a corridor of the sick and the dead, resisting the urge to put his hand through someone's chest, he didn't know if he could do that. There was an edge to the air, a taste like the first lick of energon after a really good punch in the face. It was violent, needy; it called to him. 

In his room, he could watch the eyes watching him, could imagine the doctors and nurses, the psychologists and his dear Ward Supervisor making notes about his every movement, and not let it get to him. But out there?

He wasn't sure. It was like he was back in Standard Augmentation again, a new-build with new and powerful urges, and no experience of self-restraint. 

"Come on," Gauge said. "I'll walk you there. It's almost re-fuelling time."

Vortex vented deep, giving his rotors a little shake. Better to make it look as though he was nervous than to give them any indication how close he was to testing the tensile strength of Ward Supervisor Gauge's cheerful little antennae. 

In the hallway, the dead converged on him. They lunged and loomed, as though they expected him to be afraid. But they couldn't touch him, they were no threat. Some of them reminded him of people he'd met or people he'd killed, or just people he'd seen lying dead on a battlefield or in an alley behind a bar after after closing. 

Their empty chests and the green glow of their optics did nothing to chill his core. They weren't real, not like the buzz in his circuits and the tingling of his empty weapon mounts. 

Gauge led him to the energon queue, then left him to select a table and companions all by himself. These new mechs opened up for him, giving him room to sit and a space in their conversation. They were two combat veterans and a twitchy little bomb disposal unit whose neck just cried out to be snapped. 

Vortex sipped his fuel with care, both hands on the cube. He catalogued the room, dividing the contents into the real and the unreal. The unreal clustered most tightly around the energon dispenser, like they thought they could steal a drop when no-one was looking. Vortex wondered why they didn't just stand under the central cooling fan and open their mouths, there was enough of the stuff dripping from the fan blades and the spreadeagled groundframe who'd been pinned to the ceiling just above it. 

Unreal, Vortex thought. Definitely unreal. 

The bomb disposal unit leaned close, and Vortex had to blur his optics and count to ten to stop himself from doing something he might regret. 

"You saw him," the mech whispered. "Tell me you saw him. You were looking, he was just there!"

"Saw who?" Vortex said. The guy stapled to the ceiling hadn't exactly gone anywhere. 

"There's... there was someone on the ceiling. He was bleeding. I... please tell me you saw him!" 

Vortex looked up. Nope, the guy was still there. "Uh... You said he vanished?"

The bomb disposal bot reached for his empty cube. His hands trembled, and scrap but he was tempting. "I... I gotta go." He looked up again, and bolted.

"Weird," commented one of the veterans. "OK, you wanna play Strategic Defense? They got a board over in the corner."

Vortex went along with it, but kept his optics on the other patients. Who else could see the dead mech on the ceiling? And what about the ghosts who seemed to have given up on the energon dispenser and were now wandering aimlessly around the room; could anyone see them too?

A joor or so later, after a solid run of defeats at Strategic Defense, Vortex thought he could pick out who could see the visions and who couldn't. Roughly twenty percent of the patients and two of the five visible staff showed symptoms of seeing things they really wished they couldn't. 

Vortex ran through scenarios in his mind. Psychotropic stimulants were out; there was nothing in the energon and the only therapy he'd been prescribed had been the talking kind with a small side order of crafting useless objects out of scrap metal. 

A virus could provide the answer, but wouldn't there be other symptoms as well? Vortex wasn't sure, viruses weren't exactly his favourite toy. It could be something in the air, a gas perhaps, but surely more people would be sitting nervously in their seats trying to look like they weren't scared witless. And how was it that he could see these things constantly, where everyone else seemed to be getting only occasional momentary surprises?

The bomb disposal bot reappeared at speed, and almost tripped himself onto Vortex's lap. 

"They don't let you do that here, sparky," the larger veteran warned. The smaller one snickered and slapped the side of the gaming board until the holograms re-stabilised. 

Vortex caught the bot's arm without meaning to, and it took a conscious effort for him to let go. 

"It's getting worse," the bot said; his voice was low and his thick grabbable neck was dangerously close. He looked around, his optics wide under his clear blue visor. "There's a femme in my room, she... She gets closer every night. Closer and closer. She's almost on my berth, and no-one else can see her."

"What do you think's gonna happen?" Vortex asked, more to distract himself than the bomb disposal bot. 

"I.. I can't say."

"Can't or won't?" Vortex laid his palms flat on the seat; if his hands were occupied, he couldn't be doing things that would get him locked away for longer. Behind the little bot one of the dead was looming. Its optics were black with a pinprick of sharp green light in the exact centre. It grinned. 

"I..." The little bot looked all around, through the looming ghost and up at the ceiling before nudging Vortex over to share his seat. "I don't know for sure, but this place wasn't always a psychiatric facility. It used to be a lab, back in the day. I came here once, had to diffuse a two megatonne class five clusterbomb someone had brought in for a prank. They had these machines, all kinds of things. _Old things._ Like, really old, from before the Emancipation."

"They were fraggin' with Quintesson tech?" Vortex asked, and the bot almost shot out of his armour. 

"Not so loud!" he hissed. "Scrap, you wanna ARGH!" He leapt up again, this time having apparently spotted the dead thing right in front of his face. 

Out of curiosity, Vortex nudged the dead mech's shin with his foot. There was a small amount of resistance, but his foot passed through. 

The bomb disposal bot huddled closer, venting hard. "OK, OK, it's gone now, oh scrap."

"Old tech ain't an explanation," Vortex said. 

"It's not any old tech," the bot spat. "It was bad stuff, dimensional destabilisers, miniature black holes, reanimation machines, that kinda stuff." 

"And you think someone did something and it's still having an effect now?" Vortex relaxed his grip on the seat ever so slightly. This was actually kinda entertaining, if a little spooky. 

"No," the bot said, and his frame shook so hard his hip tire kept hitting Vortex's thigh. "I _know_ they did. Listen, there was this scientist, she was the Perceptor of her time. She used the tech, she went through the wormhole, she... She came back and... Where she'd been, it changed her. But no-one caught her until it was too late."

"Lemme guess," Vortex said. "She came back and murdered a load of bots in all kinds of inventive ways, right? She nailed a guy to the ceiling, she cooked a bunch of mechs' brains until their optics melted, then put them through the reanimation whatsit, she-" he looked around for someone with an obvious cause of death. "-replaced one guy's fuel pump with a leaky manual ball valve thingy that he had to hold?" 

The bomb disposal bot stared.

"Did she import any organics?" Vortex asked, thinking of the eyes in his room. 

"Tonight," the little bot squeaked. He coughed, and started again. "Tonight's her anniversary. Ten vorns to the nanoclick since her final subject turned on her, and the whole place blew up."

Vortex shivered, but it wasn't the small bot's words. Something brushed his rotors, and his sensors told him it was only a breeze. But a breeze couldn't wrap fingers around a tip and stroke gently to his hub. 

Now _that_ was creepy. 

And hot scrap, but the bomb disposal bot looked tasty. Vortex could just imagine splitting him open, laying his insides bare and licking the cracked and crackling casing of his laser core. He could hook them up, could experience each waning pulse of energy as though it was his own. 

Vortex shook his rotors, and stood. "You wanna know what's good for you?" he said, and each word was an effort that went against the deepest coding of his personality component. "Don't talk to me." 

The bot gaped at him, and Vortex had no choice but to flee. 

The phantom touch became a whisper, suggestive and cruel in a femme's deep voice so rich and soft that Vortex could listen to it forever. 

He shut himself in his room, and the words spilled on. Incitements to violence, urging him to maim and kill, telling him of chaos and the dark and a glorious new future free from the shackles of normal physical rules. 

Ward Supervisor Gauge came to check on him. He sat stiff-backed on the bunk, and she perched beside him. Couldn't look at her, couldn't listen. She'd be so beautiful if only he took her insides out. But no, that was the dead talking, it wasn't him. He had to think his own thoughts. He could have her later, much later. The bomb disposal expert too, provided he didn't kill himself first. And the rest of them, one by one in noisy crowded clubs or secluded back streets. But not now.

Now, he had to control himself. His citizenship depended on it. 

He stared at the floor, hands clasped in his lap, his blades so rigid they ached. 

"You can tell me what Gearshift said," Gauge persisted. "It obviously had an effect on you."

Vortex shook his head. "He just..." he searched for a lie, so hard in the face of the constant tempting whispers. "He reminds me of someone I knew once. Someone who died." He looked up, and it was no effort to draw from her a sympathetic smile. "I think I'd like to be alone now."

"All right," Gauge said. She turned at the door, still smiling. "I think you've made real progress today." Then she left. 

Vortex sprawled on the bunk and spun his rotors. Weak saline solution dripped on him from the eyes in the ceiling, but at least it was cool. He needed something to counteract the thrill in his circuits and the hot buzz of arousal that came with each new ghostly suggestion. 

* * *

The living left him alone. When the screaming started, Vortex was sure they'd come, but no-one did. A siren began, footsteps clattered; a lone voice yelled that death was their only escape. 

Vortex clung to the berth and tried not to think about the world outside his room. He had a life to look forward to, a universe of infinite possibility. He had skills and contacts, and the wherewithal to truly enjoy his freedom. 

For a while he wondered if this was the treatment, if he was lying limp and drugged on another bunk in another place, while psy-specialists fed him a complex and ridiculous scenario to test the limits of his self control. 

He didn't wake.

The whispers droned on, telling him how suitable he was, how perfect a servant of chaos he could be. 

* * *

Vortex didn't know how he made it through the night. He kept expecting to reboot his optics only to find himself in a different room, some bot's energon dripping from his hands, dead parts nailed to the wall. 

He groaned and pushed himself from the bunk. At least the whispers had stopped, and the ceiling was refreshingly empty of eyes. 

Outside, the facility was in uproar. He caught the gist without even trying. Gearshift had flipped and stabbed an orderly, another mech had slit his own energon lines and bled out before anyone could help him. A small group had experienced simultaneous hallucinations and had rioted against staff. 

But it was over now. Even the dead seemed to have got bored and had checked themselves out. 

Vortex sighed, and found himself a seat in the centre of the rec room. He powered up a game of Strategic Defense and watched the holograms flicker. He felt as though he'd passed a test, as though in some weird way he'd earnt his ticket out of there. 

He still had the therapists to please, but his mind was clear, his frame again under control. All that stood between him and the civilian life he so richly deserved was a short period of creative lying. 

That could even be fun.


End file.
